Animator's Workshop: A Puppetmaster's Guide 2.0

I think a large part of this debate boils down to: if you can get Count's Cuffs, you should already HAVE Taeon Gloves because they are considerably easier to obtain, so why use the harder to obtain yet slightly inferior alternative?

Define "harder to obtain".
Count's Cuffs aren't exactely a particularly sought after item, I'm having issues imagining to have competition over obtaining them during a LS run.
Most of the time in your LS's event they'll end up hitting the floor.
If you forget passing you'll end up with a pair in your inventory.

For Taeon you have to farm them on purpose, granted that it's pretty easy considering how gear drops aplenty in Yorcia and how you can buy with 3 wings if you're unlucky, but they also require you to spend gil to augment and pray the gods of Randomness to get the augments you want.
Not particularly hard for the Leaf slot, but good luck with Snow and especially Dusk slot.
(I trashed over 50 mils gil into Yorcia augments so far, and I didn't get not even close to where I wanted to get to).

Just like with all things that require luck some people have it better, some people have it harder. There's no skill involved and there's no guarantee whatsoever, just gil and luck.

If you've been particularly unlucky, have no gil left or just plain decide you don't want to be bothered with random ***anymore or you decide it's simply not worth it for a job you use once every 2 months, you're bound to use another option in these and more situations.
Granted they're all inferior options, it's good to know which can be a decent one. Especially if it's one you don't have to pay gil to get, especially if you end up with a pair "accidentally".

This is a very different scenario from farming Counts Cuffs on purpose and/or seacoming them, which is clearly not what I was suggesting.


It's just that if for some reason, whatever it may be, you don't have Taeon and you already have Count's, they are not utter ***but a decent option.
Nothing more, nothing less.

I actually use Count's Cuffs, because I haven't bothered putting TA+2 on my Taeon Gloves. There wasn't much competition on them, and they are close enough to Taeon for what I use pup on right now (Salvage and Dyna) that I'm fine with them. The difference is like 1-2%. Once I get KKK and start taking puppetmaster to more stuff, maybe, I'll work on perfect Taeon.

The Skirmish augmenting system is garbage. Alluvion is less garbage but still garbage. Like you say, Leaf augments are pretty easy, and the most I spent on TA+2 on a single piece was probably about a mill when leafslit were much more costly. For snow and dusk, it's just a terrible money sink. I honestly believe that you are better off getting all other pieces for your job before even starting pursuing perfect augments. Including REM.

where the hell do u even get counts cuffs.
also your playstyle gear it however you want.

They drop from Perfidien, second-to-last Vagary boss, though they don't seem to be super-common.

If your "playstyle" is choosing worse gear, go for it! If you're coming to FFXI forums to ask about "what's best", don't get upset when you get the obvious answer that's not the piece of gear that dropped to you because nobody in your LS wanted it.

For anyone serious about gearing PUP (or ANY of the ~10 melee jobs on the Taeon set - I'm excluding RNG RDM), you want TA+2% Taeons anyway, period. TA+2% isn't even that hard to get with NQ Leafslits, which sell for ~6k each right now on my server. It's not like they're terribly hard to obtain.


That's pretty reasonable. Count's are fine as a decent piece for taking PUP to non-serious events. They're not too hard to upgrade from though, when you're ready to try to focus on your PUP gear. Aside from the TA, any Accuracy augment is obviously also going to make Taeon a lot more useful for any high level content (and obviously won't matter on pre-Adoulin stuff like Dyna/Salvage).


Totally agree that Snow/Dusk are pretty pricey and arguably not worth spending too much time on yet. Leaf, on the other hand, are cheap and available so not much reason not to get those now.

On my stuff, I also have spent a good bit of time with Snow stones. Many of which I farmed myself in Alluvion Cirdas/Rala. But I can see why you may want to sell those and fund other stuff instead of dropping them on the random chance of good augments.

For dusk stones, I tossed a few stones at gear just to get something acceptable (i.e. any augment that isn't total trash, like DEF). I'm not spending too much now though until Dusk stones become cheaper. Hoping that Alluvion phase 3 (Outer Rakaznar?) is coming and Dusk are the "common" drop there so the prices plummet, then I'll work on perfecting my sets.

^ this x 10.000.
Plus the strain on your inventory. Because they're not Rare, you feel inclined to have 2000 different sets.
A Taeon Set for TP.
A Taeon SET for some WS.
Some different pieces for some other WS.
A Taeon set for Phalanx on RUN, a Taeon set for other stuff, etc.
Making silly examples.
Now multiply that for 7-8 different jobs. Add Helios, Add Telchine, add Skirmish weapons.

Yes, it's uberly annoying and a huge strain on our inventories (thank god we're receiving 80 more inventory slots with the may patch).
Leaf slot are not easier per se, it's the fact that Leaf stones are much cheaper than the rest.
The "easy" augments are the ones that have small range.
Like Haste (1-3), Crit (1-3), TA (1-2). Granted it's still dependant on luck and it could take you 20000 stones just like a single one for someone else (and this "unfairness" tickles me beyond sanity), but once you get the right augment it's easier to get cap values than, say, stuff like +Stat or +Acc/Att.
But you still need to get the right augment first, out of usually a group of 6-9 possible augments.
So yeah, it can get pretty frustrating.

tl;dr
With unlimited gil, unlimited time, unlimited patience and unlimited inventory space, everybody of us would like to get a huge range of differently augmented sets for each possible situation for each of our jobs.
But when you put that into reality and see how all those resources are finite and not unlimited, you kinda have to draw lines somewhere and have to accept some compromises.
Where you do it and how you do it it's highly subjective, but you have to draw a line somewhere. It's impossible to get 2000 version of each set when you have so many jobs, you need to renounce to something.


If you're talking about me I'd like to clarify this little misunderstanding.
I never asked "what's best", I knew it already just like everybody else (that is: Taeon).
I just asked if someone else had already mathed out Count's Cuffs because I was being lazy and didn't want to do it myself.
It seemed like a meh piece but I was curious to check the impact of +att and +5 MA.
In the end I had to do it myself and I was slightly surprised because while they clearly are absolutely not stellar they are better than I expected.
They totally are not "utter ***". They're a decent option, just not the best.
They fit perfectly in that wide space between "the best" and "the worst".

Talking about PUP of course. The situation is worse for MNK given the much wider range of possible gear they already have access to. (MA+5 still nice to cap attack delay when there's no haste samba around, but it's a very small difference for MNK)

TA+2% is such an incredible augment that it makes pretty much every Taeon piece best in slot (or very near best in slot) TP gear for any melee job on the set. For most Taeon pieces, the same augs you'd want for TP set are also better than or sidegrades to any non-Taeon gear for WS (even if different augments might make them even better).

Quite simply, if you care about any of the jobs on the set it's insane not to put in the fairly minimal effort to at least get a set with TA+2% augment with cheap leaf stones.

You really don't need tons of augmented sets, especially if you're tight on funds or just really hate the augment system. You NEED a Taeon TA+2% TP set if you really care about any of the melee jobs on it though. WS, DW, pet gear... those can all be situationally useful but not nearly as big of a boost as TA+2 set over the other options.

And if you play multiple melee jobs on the set, you can use them across many jobs and it's probably comparatively cheaper to play the augment game than it would be to, say, make a reforged piece for each job. I use at least 4/5 Taeon for 8 different jobs. And I only made two sets, a TA+2% TP set (that still doubles as very good WS gear), and a DW set that's clearly a lower priority (for solo stuff on DW jobs).

yea im not serious about the game i guess. here i am working on my 3rd mythic but hey you know me.
also already have the gear for taeon with ta +2 just saying in regards to people talkin about the gloves.

Absolutely, pretty much that.
...and?
It's not like you're saying something that anybody in here doesn't know already, are you?
I apologize if I sound rude or too blunt, not my intention.
But you're saying the exact same thing for the nth time, with different details.
You're failing to see that people who currently do not have or do not intend to get Taeon didn't make such a choice because they fail to see the relevance of the set or because it's "too hard for them to obtain".
So what use is it gonna be to explain once again why Taeon is so incredibly good?


Exactely, that's also one of the very important parts that play a role in that subjective process of "drawing lines" I was talking about earlier.
Given that it's impossible not go draw lines somewhere, how you do it and where you do it is highly subjective, and how much you care for a certain job certainly plays a big role.

um, they are a moderately common drop in an extremely easy to PUG event that is still being shouted regularly (here, at least) vs. an item from a boss that is moderately irritating to pop and requires more coordination than a Skirmish run, coupled with lotting against a generally larger pool of people who may or may not be loot ***. as has also been pointed out, Leafslits to get TA+2 are dirt cheap and the augment is relatively common.

further, for those people who do not have an LS running Vagary, Taeon is going to be more accessible and let's really not pretend that gil is difficult to obtain in today's XI. any chump in sparks gear can make a couple million on any given day doing Dynamis and/or Salvage to outfit their augments.

You could even technically drop the PUG from that post, as the skirmish is quite solo farmable for gear.

Sechs, I like you. But this is just driving us both nuts. You are getting annoyed that I won't shut up about Taeon being so good, and I'm getting annoyed that we're wasting so much space even talking about Count's Cuffs when they're obviously inferior to a very easy to obtain option.

We don't talk about other clearly worse options to standard gear (what's the best TP ring if you don't have Epona's? Who cares, get Epona's), so why are we doing it with these hands? OK, fine - use them if you have them but know you can upgrade easily. This is like Sparks gear: we all get that it's a nice placeholder, but there's little point engaging in a lot of discussion about the piece when the real answer is "work on something better".

Since there seems to be a lot of arguing going on, I thought I might drop in and say what I currently have and ask what single piece I should go after next to make my pup better. I know I will never get some of the best stuff (Well, I will get a kenkoken if I win the mog bonanza, but other than that...)
So here is what I currently have:
Set wise, I am 5/5 on AF119, 5/5 on relic 119, 4/5 on Empy 119(need a clear, already have the ingredients), and 5/5 on Qaaxo A:15.

Weapon : I have Tinhapsia A:15 and C:15
Range:Diviniator
Neck:Aspirity Necklace,
Earring: Steelflash/Bladeborn
Ring: Rajas/Adoulin
Belt: Hurch'lan sash
Back: Dispersal with STR+3, Dex+, Martial Arts+17

So, should I get reflective crystals and more dispersal backs to try for something better? What is the first piece (or first 2 or 3) that I can go after for upgrades? I am not necessarily asking for what is best as I will likely not get them, just the next things to go after. Any advice is appreciated. Thank you.

Wish I could help you rune, but I'm way too partial atm to offer you reliable help.
One thing that stands out though: why no Taeon?



On a different topic instead. Did anybody math out how the maneuver duration buff works yet?

Aside from the obvious answer to work on Alluvion Skirmish gear...


Well, a good Ohrmazd can beat Tinhaspa but could be expensive playing the random augment game. Might make an amazing pair in a few augments, you might spend 50 million+... DMG augment is the most important, from Duskslit/Dusktip stones. I got a fantastic one for my MNK (PUP uses KKK) with DMG+26 augment, DMG+29 is max.

My question though... why Tinhaspa A and C, and not B (the one that's generally accepted as most useful for both PUP and MNK, since the Acc is super helpful on any high end content and the Atk on path A is often meaningless on easy stuff where you're atk-capped)? Unless it was a typo and you meant you have the Acc-path Tinhaspa, it pains me to say it, but if you're not planning to shoot for KKK or Ohrmazd, might want to make a path B Tinhaspa.

Replace that Adoulin Ring with Epona's. Adoulin's an OK Acc choice, but even when you use it, you'll want to pair Epona/Adoulin. I'm not really a big Adoulin Ring fan period though, it's well rounded enough to not completely suck... but for every situation there's a better choice.


Windbuffet+1 is usually better, so get one of those too if you don't have it already. Hurch retains a place for a good master+puppet hybrid Acc/Haste piece though.


I wouldn't make it a huge priority, that's quite good as-is. MA+20 is max, so 17 is a very good augment. Can also get pet TP Bonus. Maybe if you have nothing better to do, try to get a second Dispersal Mantle... but hold onto that one unless you totally replace it.

Other stuff you may want:
- Fotia gorget and/or belt, useful for all jobs and PUP is no exception.

- Prosilio Belt +1, fantastic Stringing Pummel (and V.Smite) belt. Fotia's really good too though, so don't sweat it too much if you have that.

- A really good DT- set. Otronif+1 pieces are still excellent, Qaaxo B (or C legs), Umbra Cape, rings, etc.

- Fill in any missing attachments you lack

Taeon is skirmish gear, I believe? My linkshell doesn't do any skirmish events. They alternate between Unity NMs and Vagary (only the 130 and 132, currently). From what I am aware of, skirmish costs a -lot- of gil, and what gil I had mostly went to purchasing all the etchings necessary to upgrade the Empyreon armor to 119. From what I know (which is not much, having never been able to do skirmish), I wouldn't have time to fit in before the nightly events. When I do have time after checking all the mog gardens, delivering them to various bank characters to make stacks, and selling, I try to get a few Unity RoE done for accolades.
Most of the link shell I am in get their unity points (and job points) botting every night after events. Since I don't bot, I rarely have the accolades to keep up for events.

But since you would recommend, then I should put my af119,relic119 and empy 119 on mog slips and try and get Taeon armor? I will ask if the link shell will do a night of skirmish or at least make sure I won't get kicked for doing events outside of the linkshell (If I can find any shouts). I assume that I would need to bring a different job to skirmish to collect the drops?
Which job should I use for it? Also, is it as gil intensive as I have heard? As above, I had to sell my lu shang rod to get enough gil for the etchings for my empy119 armor....

Making a Tinhapsa B is something I can take care of. Apparently I just got bad information at the time...
Kenkoken ... I try every mog bonanza to get, but that would be my only chance of seeing that...
At the time I was told Tinhapsa was better than Ohrmazd, but I can get one of those and switch.. (Bothersome that you can't store augmented items on bank characters - so I will have to find some place to store these Tinhapsas....

I actually agree on the Adoulin ring, but my linkshell leader told me that I had to get that one. I am worried about getting Epona's, is popping Rani even possible now? I believe her pop conditions required people doing the area quests and Abyssea is a ghost zone nowadays...

At between 3.5 and 4 mil it will take me a while to work up for it, but I will put it on my list.

Thank you. With the 3 for 1 trade, I can take the enchantments off all the useless ones I got when my linkshell did incursion all the time, turn them into Dispersals and try new ones without losing this one.

Ah! I do have both Fotia's made - I just didn't have them on hand when I made the first post. I have in the past had massive problems with switching equipment around or getting macros to work (also, to be fair, I am usually 80/80 in all but one storage - I have to move things around every time I get drops -_-;) so I have not tried to get them to work. I admit, I do wonder some times (1) how people have room for equipment to swap in and out and (2) if I am the only person that has trouble any time I try using macros...
Otronif is Skirmish, yes? That would explain why I don't have it. I will try and get a set if I can get people to skirmish.
So I should make a Qaaxo B or C set as well as the A? or just the legs?

Ah, that I do not need to worry about; I make a point of getting every attachment the day they come out.
Thank you for your information. Apparently I need lots of gil, 4 million ish for windbuffet belt+1, then 50 million for each thing that involves Skirmish? <sigh, why couldn't i have needed something questable... Ah well>

Ah... when you made them, Tinhaspa probably were better than Ohrmazd. Alluvion Skirmish weapons when initially released in Rala/Cirdas were mediocre, it wasn't until a couple months ago with Yorcia skirmish that they became really strong. The number and strength of the augments was adjusted to give much much stronger possibilities.

In any case, Tinhaspa B are my pick for a "sure thing". They're good everywhere and they're a set price. You could get an amazing pair of Ohrmazd even more cheaply if you're very lucky, but you might get unlucky and get crap augments on expensive stones. Wait on the Ohrmazd until you have plenty of gil to spare.


It's fine, she's always pop-able. I think the spawn conditions might have just been to trigger initial appearance on the server, but I've never heard of her not being able to be spawned now. And you can solo her with brew easily these days.


NQ Windbuffet is very affordable these days and is still your next best option TP option behind +1 any time when you don't need a heavy Acc build (or are highly focused on automaton stats), so that's a nice placeholder before +1.

I dunno that I'd prioritize Qaaxo stuff too much now, except that the B body is still quite good as an acc/DT and even WS piece.

Others are more "if you already have it", as even with Taeon beating them for typical use, Qaaxo B retain a niche as a nice hybrid Acc/PDT piece for defensive sets.

In any case, if you're really trying to make an excellent PDT set, Otronif+1 has highest potential PDT (PDT-4% max, plus can get additional MDT- augments more rarely) in 4/5 slots, except that legs are beaten by the oddball Qaaxo legs (C path is the "weird" augments, and are the only PDT-5% legs for most light DD jobs - rest of the Qaaxo C pieces do not have PDT).


Nah, Skirmish armors (Taeon set) should be MUCH cheaper. Your main priority is getting TA+2% on all 5 pieces from the cheap Leafslit slot. You can even spam cheap NQ Leafslits (which on my server are under 100k for a whole stack of 12) since the augment range is so low.

Where things get expensive are dusk and snow augments. For your Taeon stuff, until you have money I'd suggest trying to use NQ stones to get anything decent in those slots (i.e. not crap like DEF or Waltz potency, get something offensive like Acc, STR, DEX, crit...) and settle for that until you have more money or stones get cheaper.

Alluvion skirmish Weapons can be expensive too, since the very pricey dusk stones are vital to getting good DMG+ augments (which are required to make the weapons better than alternatives).

ANY skirmish gear could be amazingly good with minimal money spent if you're very lucky, or you might go on a streak of awful luck and not get good augments. 50M for a weapon is a very high end exaggeration of "normal", but it's certainly possible (though in the neighborhood of 10-20M doesn't sound unrealistic for a good weapon).

More realistically, you can expect good Leaf augments are quite cheap, and those are the most important on armor. Snow cost more. Dusk cost even more (at least for now, though I would not be surprised to see Dusk cost plummet with a speculated future Alluvion phase 3 in Outer Ra'kaznar which drops dusk stones more frequently)

Runeghost you've already been told but I'll add my voice to the chorus.
Skirmish isn't properly a "linkshell content", which is probably why your LS isn't doing Skirmish as a LS event.
It's lowmen content. You could solo it if you wanted (granted that it's not particularly efficient to do so).
Entry pops aren't really that expensive. I don't know about your server but on mine there's plenty of shouts with shared costs, where everybody pays a part of the popset.
There are several "qualities" of popset. Rank4 and Rank5 can be expensive but 1/1/1, 2/2/2 and 3/3/3 popsets aren't really that out of reach.

Taeon gear is among the best you can get for your TP needs, and they can become pretty nice options, usually the best, even for WS.
You can also get pretty unique augments for your pet or other purposes :D
You can get a pretty complete list of the possible augments and their caps HERE

This is for ALLUVION Skirmish btw.
You get gear in Yorcia Alluvion at the end of the run. Items drop in the global Treasure Pool.
You can also get Mellidopt Wings, which can be used to buy single pieces (3 wings each) if you're unlucky and that certain piece you want never drops.
Thre's also another Alluvion (Rala and Cirdas), but it only drops weapons. They too can be bought with Mellidopt Wings.
There are 3 types of stones Snow-, Leaf- and Dusk-.
Each item has 3 "augmenation slots", one for each type of stone.
Alluvion Rala/Cirdas drop Snow- (common) and Leaf- (rare).
Alluvion Yorcia drops Leaf (common) and Dusk- (rare).

The otronif set drops in OLD Skirmish Yorcia (not alluvion) and it's ilevel 113. You can then upgrade each item to 119 with a Key Item that drops in OLD Ra'kaznar Skirmish, with a not very high drop rate from the final chest.
Otronif is an excellent set to be augmented for PDT/MDT. But quite frankly, and I'll probably the only person to say this to you and be labelled as a fool, I think you can survive without Otronif gear.
If you really want it, put it as low priority behind other things which are definitely more important.
There are other options for PDT that's not Otronif btw.
For instance Battle-something Gaiters that drop from Tenzen also have PDT, there are other similar examples.



Ok, now that we've gone through how Skirmish is so simple, lowmen friendly, accessible and the drops are so incredibly awesome, how about we go through the bad part?
It's a Roulette game, unless you get lucky (might as well happen!) it might require you an incredible amount of gil, patience and farming to achieve the augments you want on those pieces.
So arm yourself with patience and... with a lot of gil.

You might want to start off slowly, like picking up only a few pieces that you think are going to be more important than the others and concentrate on those, and after that... time will tell. See if you feel like augmenting more or to look for compromises/alternative gear.

For the majority of slots (all?) there is no single armour item that comes close to Skirmish armour with best or close to best augments, period.
This doesn't mean that you're not allowed to play the job if you don't have skirmish armour or that everything's that's not skirmish is gonna suck. There's a whole lot shades of grey between the awesomeness of Skirmish and, say, using 117 Sparks gear :P

Never forget this is a game and the first and most important purpose should be to entertain yourself. If at some point you find out you're not having fun, then stop what you're doing and ignore the pressure coming from other people telling you what to do and how to play (even if they're right, as long as you're aware you're doing something "wrong" but you're doing it consciounsly with the purpose of raising your level of entertainment, I don't see anything "bad" with that ;))


With that said, good luck in your upcoming adventures! :D

I'm too emo and biased at this point to give you a thorough and balanced answer, but as long as you keep this in mind I'll try to share my personal and biased view atm.

Despite the sheer amount of buffs PUP has seen over time, and despite it being an overall pretty viable job in a wide range of content, I think it's still not quite where it should or could be.
The 100 JP gift is pretty much a must, and it's not enough (and farming 100 JPs isn't very accessible/fast for a lot of players. Not talking about myself, I'm a JP-freak).

If anything I could summarize PUP into being a job full of paradoxes.
In theory you should be able to have full control over a completely customizable pet, but in reality there are a lot of things that hinder that potential.
You can equip your pet towards full damage, but then it will lack durability and accuracy, you can equip your pet for durability, but then it will serve no purpose (and still be squishy). You can gear your pet for accuracy but then damage will be lackluster (even Sharpshoot, our best damaging frame, is still pretty meh if compared to the latest updates BST pets received or compared to SMN Blood Pacts, this in spite of the recent updates to our WSs)

You can equip your pet to be a healer, but its AI is usually inferior to that of Trusts, especially if you want to address pt members that's not you. This regardless of the fact you should in theory be able to have full control over it.

You have a big theoretical versatility granted by different Automatons, but in reality you have no official means to quickly swap through them (if you use Windower, you can compensate this, at least partially, with the use of the awesome "Autocontrol" addon).



So basically I don't know what to say about PUP.
It's a job I greatly enjoy playing, it's far superior to the general idea people have of the job, but at the same time I don't feel there are many niches where it shines for any particular aspect compared to other jobs, and it's a shame given the amount of updates the job received over time.
To think that in spite of that the job is still not where it should/could be is really sad.

I really don't comment on here much but after reading the last post I felt that I should say something. I actually disagree with Sechs on a few points.

The durability of the auto now is fantastic. I can keep my auto alive in high tier content now better than I ever have been. This is for all three frames I normally use Ve/Ss, Ve/Har, and Ve/Ve. I rarely use the Whm or Rdm autos unless I'm soloing and even then I may use one of the melee frames over the mages. Also the acc of all 3 melee types range from 976 to 996 without food or Ionis.

I also will have to disagree on the speed on changing out the auto. It maybe different without the JP 100 gift but with it I can change between either one of my melee frames in under 10 secs. This is how I do it.

First off all my frames use Ve head. As I mentioed earlier I have the JP 100 gift. My stable attachments are

Armor Plate 3 and 2
Turbo Charger 2 and 1
Target Marker and Stabilizer 3
Auto Repair kit 3 and 2
Those attachments I keep on all 3 of my melee frames and I position them on the second and third rows in my automaton attachment screen. My top row I leave for my flexable attachments. These are attachments that will move in and out due to the elemental capacity cap from the different frames.

Harle frame which I use on mobs or NM's that are weak to blunt get Tension Spring 3 and 2 and Inhibitor. Normally I'm fighting with this frame and I try to Ws as much as possible and having it use Knockout quickly after my Ws is nice.

Ve frame which I use when I want to take little to no damage and I'm mostly backline to it or if a mob or Nm is weaker to slashing damage I'll use all three Tension Springs or a combo of Tension Spring 3 Strobe 2 and Reactive Shield or Inhibitor. And the last spot I'll put Amor Plate.

Ss frame I'll use on mobs or NM's weak to piercing. I'll use
Tension Spring 3 and 2, Drum Magazine and either Coiler or Inhibitor. I find with that setup I can swap out my Auto pretty quickly. That's just some of what I do on Pup but I fealt that I needed to say something because my experience on Pup isnt the same as Sechs. It's late and I'm going to bed lol

Strengths:
-In theory the pets provide a lot of flexibility. The automaton can assume one of several roles.
-PUP is a very good solo job. The third-highest evasion in the game plus having a pocket mage makes the job easy and tough for things like WKR, Skirmish, Salvage, and Dynamis. Since the pet is a separate target, abilities which debilitate a single target are less dangerous compared to using /DNC or DNC main to recover.
-PUP has a unique play style that isn't really like anything else in FFXI.

Weaknesses:
-Automatons are currently weak compared to SMN and BST pets. Both of the other pet jobs have powerful gimmicks at the moment whereas the autos do not. It's harder to get a party spot in current content compared to the other pet jobs. Sechs is right. PUP doesn't have a niche at present.

But the biggest weakness of all is that puppetmaster does not do heavy damage. It does ok damage. If you pour all of your time and energy into perfect puppetmaster gear, including KKK, your damage is about on-par with a non-mythic monk. Unlike monk, you don't have 2500 HP, Mantra, Formless Strikes, Impetus, etc. If you understand that, then you will not be as disappointed with the job.


No job is as varied as BLU. BLU is in a period of extremely high power and utility.


The maneuver thing is a nice quality-of-life adjustment.


Damage, but I don't use my PUP in parties really.


Yes, and that's the problem. I made a post on the official forums with a fix for PUP- buffs and heals need to affect pets, even if at a reduced rate. Pets do not scale. Their strength is a flat rate, which might be high for lower-tier content, but does not keep up with buffed players at mid- and high-tier content.

PUP + auto damage should be just behind samurai. I don't believe in soloish jobs like PUP matching jobs that can only dps, so just behind would be fine. It is not, currently, however.

that automatons can be kept alive easier than they used to, compared to the insane durability/strength of BST pets, it is still hurting as one of the most fragile pets out there. even DRG Wyverns are more durable (and really, they better be more durable with a 20 min CD on use without the benefit of an ability like Deus Ex Automata...) any strat that is going to be "just throw pets at it" the automaton is going to fall far behind others. the 100 JP gift may help, but other jobs have long since taken JP priority for me, and with the amount of time I have sunk into JP already, I don't know that I can be bothered with still needing another ~40 points on GEO and potentially 100 on COR just in case I am ever called on for that again.

I have long railed against the piecemail approach to how they have updated pet jobs in favor of universal buffs followed by tweaking to ensure whatever they consider "balanced" these days. everytime I have been met with "oh, but we don't know what we're getting, it could be amazing" and every bloody time it falls flat on its face and my Animator just gathers more dust. these days, if I really want to use my PUP, about the only thing I bother with is tossing Otto at a Lair/Colonization Reive to rank up my Coalition standing.

/quote/ that automatons can be kept alive easier than they used to, compared to the insane durability/strength of BST pets, it is still hurting as one of the most fragile pets out there. even DRG Wyverns are more durable /quote/

Not true. I think the problem Pup is having now is from the negative stigma from old and the fact that the auto USED to be squishy. I'll admit I even stopped trying to use Pup for a while because the Auto was so squishy. That is entirely not the case now. I have started testing Pup more and more in High Tier battles and if the Auto is not tanking an NM and it's just taking Aoe damage and an occasional hit here and there the auto will not die. So far I've done it on Avatar fights level D, two AA battles also Level D and I have had it stay alive during an Astral Flow also level D for a Rem Chapter fight. Before the Avatar fight I was told that my Auto would die and it did not.

The 100 JP gift is what has made the difference. I know I'm not the only Pup that has witnessed this. The Automatons are not squishy and you can get their Acc all the way to 996 without food Ionis or maneuvers.

I just had my SS shredded by a VT Eft in Dho gates, but like I said no 100 point gift.

Yea. Before I got the 100 gift I would agree 100%. The Auto are to squishy. But now with my gear and the attachment setup I mentioned above I'm able to keep my Auto alive through almost all content I've tried with pup so far. Even in a Tojil Delve I was able to keep my auto alive through all 5 NM. Tojil was the only one that killed my auto and that is after my auto took hate and was tanking for a little. Keeping 2 light maneuvers and 1 earth keeps the auto alive through most mobs.

If you gear it up hardcore, that little Automaton is damn near unkillable. You have to use attachments you probably wouldn't normally use(Magic jammers) and you have to have the 100jp gift. But if you you have that, Auto becomes a brickwall with over 100hp regen. Dakuwaqa literally could not drop my automaton's hp below 100%. The fact that the stupid piece of ***sits five yalms away means it dies every time to Marine Mayhem, but I'm working on that.
Planning to solo it here soon.

From my experiences you don't even need mana jammers if you have all three armor plates equipped. Also for your shark problem try removing armor plate 1 and replace it with schruzen